Friday

January 4, 2008

Dale Jensen, Purgatorial (Malthus, 2004). 48 pages. $9.

I picked this up at the Lakeview branch of the Oakland Public Library. I'm not quite sure what Jack Foley means when he says in his blurb that "Jensen's poems are able to tell us things about ourselves we would never have suspected," but there are some good moments in the book: my favorite being the end poem "Remember the Maine" (48). I also liked these lines from "This Vision":

on some level a structure i've learnedin thirty years of writing poetryit isn't easy giving you this half lieall you do is open your head and use your skilland people think you're honest (p. 2, ll. 8-12)

I think this is a self-published venture (Jensen edited a magazine called Malthus). The magic page count of 48 makes it technically a full-length, although I wish he would have done some tough editing and boiled this down to a more solid chap.